Dom, I totally agree.with everything you have said---in every way. Thankyou for acknowledging the struggle of transgendered Americans and myself (although not Transgendered,) would like to thank you for all your work on behalf of marriage equality. I have one concern that has been very tough for me, since I receive bigotry from both sides regarding this issue.

I think we can all agree that all Americans of age who love one another should be able to marry and maintain loving, committed, long term relationships---but when I make the obvious point that a minority of Americans, but studies do indicate that it is a much large minority than acknowledged, being of all political and religious views and not simply confined to people belonging to religious sects wearing Prairie dresses, are of Plural Orientation and still at the very beginning of our struggle, our marriage rights likely twenty years or more away.

At this time, those calling themselves Polyamorous generally state that they have "chosen" a great lifestyle for themselves and enjoy parties where they can meet other people who have "chosen" such lifestyles. They do not seem to be involved in any political struggle involving their own rights and did not help me with my discovery of who and how I love when I called upon them for counseling and support while coming out. I do not relate to this at all----loving who I love without being able to choose how or why I do so and certainly finding it inconvenient enough not to want to actually seek it out at parties. The men and women I know of plural orientation (which is to say LOVING rather than just dating more than one) if they have jobs or reputations or children they wish to keep, in general live in the same sort of hiding that gays once were forced to do, worried for the loss of those jobs and those children and those reputations and having not a thousand partners but perhaps two or three.

Because recognizing our rights is genuinely politically inconvenient for the gay community, in spite of our hard work on your behalf, we now experience political distance (in the case of Rep. Jamie Pedersen publicly professed political distance) from those for whom we toiled while thinking our struggles to be the same as yours. Even from those most involved in Polyamory groups others of us do not often feel that our experience is acknowledged for what it is: an orientation, not a choice---especially, apparently, in men (allele 334). So even people professing to be Poly often do not themselves acknowledge their own orientation or oppression but rather claim to have made a choice. A gay man two days ago told me that we should not be recognized because we practice child molestation (referring to the very small number of Fundamentalist LDS who were convicted of that while even the vast majority of them would never do so such a thing and not to the vast majority of plural Americans of all religions who also would not do so).

This is the exact same charge which was historically leveled against gays at the beginning of your struggle and whereas there were a higher percentage of straight child molesters than gay ones in reality, I might be willing to make a bet that there are a larger percentage of monogamous child molesters than plural ones---as far as their adult relationships go---married or single but yet abusing children.

Polyamorists, gay and straight, must recognize that not everyone can come to a party to meet others like themselves nor do they perhaps want to---this is not a social club, it is gender orientation and a loving family structure which has no marriage rights and is in hiding and deeply oppressed at this time. The monogamous gay community should not abandon those of us who take this very seriously as a political issue after we have toiled for you and thought this would be the beginning of our struggle, the great victory you have had, in spit of the struggles you must still face...and mainstream straights, please, please stop rolling your eyes worrying if the rights which gays have fought and won so dearly might lead to poly marriage as well and using that as an argument against the victory at hand. Yes, this victory, it is to be hoped, will in fact lead to poly marriage rights---and that's a good thing. Yes Dom, it is all the same struggle. GLBTP-P-P-P!